


Take the Long Way 'Round

by ohjustdisarmalready



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, The Power Of Love, Time Travel, copious use of 'hey we don't know what the shit molly's death thing is' as a plot device, it had to be done, my contribution to the denial fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: Mollymauk, not for the first time, wakes up dead.The afterlife is not how he imagined it would be.





	1. Damn It

**Author's Note:**

> So uh. I'm not 100% caught up, but I am pretty much spoilered to hell, so here's my contribution upon learning that my favorite character is doomed. Also, if any fandom exists out there without a time travel fic, I'm coming for you next.

Here is how it goes:

Mollymauk Tealeaf spits blood, and dies, and is dead.

Mollymauk Tealeaf heaves, and claws, and lives.

_Damn it_ , he thinks. But that’s a terrible first thought to have, so he’ll pretend later that it was something else.

For now, though… _damn it. Not again_.

And he claws his way out of his grave.

* * *

Molly is (empty) a little roughed up from squirming out of the dirt again. Those assholes buried him, he can’t believe it. They could have at least burned him, or left him out for the wolves, or something. He hasn’t even got his coat. He hopes Beau kept it; forcing her to wear that thing would be his greatest accomplishment.

Still, though, bury him they did. In a nice little clearing, too. A little investigation turns up some wilted flowers, which seems like more of a Jester or Yasha thing than something Caleb or Beau would think to do. Maybe Nott, though. Nott’s one of those that you don’t really understand, you just accept her how she is.

It’s comforting to think those assholes got their shit together and rescued the others, though, so he decides to believe it was Yasha and Jester who gave him flowers. Maybe a group endeavor. Make an afternoon of it.

It isn’t a bad place, for a grave. Kind of pretty. Hidden away unless you know where to look, too.

Gods, he is so fucking hungry. And tired. Tired and hungry. Add dirty to the list too, both in the literal dirt way where he just came from the ground and also in the way where he’s not really sure if his body was rotting or not? And also, what that would do to him if it was? But it’s fucking gross, is what it is. He can’t exactly cut away the dead stuff like a bruised pear.

He’s never especially bothered with that himself. The bruised bits get a bit slimy, but food is food. He’d like some right now.

He does seem mostly intact, which is nice. He was feeling pretty not-intact towards the end there, so somebody must have…sewn up…his guts? His lungs?

Magical healing. Must be magical healing. He doesn’t think Beau, Caleb, and Nott could manage stitching flesh to be airtight; it’s hard as fuck if you haven’t got it prepared.

Another factoid of a previous life that Molly would really have been just as happy without.

Regardless: Limbs, attached. Heart, beating. Senses, working. Injuries…

He looks at his hands, which he’s been avoiding doing because clawing out of a grave fucks you right up and he doesn’t want to know, and—that can’t be good.

His tattoos are gone.

Immediately, Molly rolls to his feet and ducks to the edge of the clearing. Or, he tries, at least. What actually happens is that he comes to his feet, gets lightheaded, and passes out right on top of his grave.

_Damn_ , he thinks as he fades, but he is too far gone to finish the thought.

* * *

He awakens in his bunk in the carnival and stretches, yawning and already patting around for his swords. He frowns when he can’t seem to come up with his bundled coat like he usually has, before remembering. Right. Dead people don’t get coats. Right shame, that.

Dead people also aren’t supposed to wake up in long-disbanded circuses under the care of equally long-imprisoned ringmasters.

Molly blinks at Gustav, who is sitting in the corner with a ledger. He’d never really understood what Gustav did with those, and he couldn’t really help without getting what was going on. It’s all numbers and letters to him.

Gustav smiles cautiously, warily. That doesn’t seem right. None of this seems right.

“Welcome back,” Gustav says. “My name is Gustav of the Fletching and Moonlight Traveling Carnival of Curiosities. We found you in quite a state, friend.”

Molly remembers being given this exact welcome two years ago and change, and he’s always wished he had said something better than ‘empty.’ And here he is, just staring at the man who gave him a family, just as speechless as the first time.

Gustav does exactly as Molly is half-expecting, remaining disarmingly seated with no visible weapons, though Molly knows there’s no chance that at least Bo isn’t nearby somewhere. Not if he really is once again a stranger.

He glances at his hands and they are bandaged, but under the gauze they are the same hands he’s had for his two years of life. The body he lived in is the body he still has.

But not. Because he’s pretty damned sure his body had more tattoos than this, for one thing.

“You were collapsed a bit into the woods. Lucky we were gathering firewood or you might have frozen. All the same, you look like you’ve been through hell,” Gustav tries. Molly shrugs.

“I got stabbed, a little,” he offers in a croak. His voice is fucked—he hasn’t actually drunk any water in his short second—third?—life.

Gustav raises a brow at his clear lack of stab wounds, and Molly shrugs. “I guess I got better.”

“Well, you certainly have the scars for it,” Gustav doesn’t quite laugh, but his expression invites Molly to if he wishes. Molly gives him a rusty chuckle. “Anywhere in particular you were going, pre-stabbing?”

Molly frowns, thinking. Maybe this is a part of death, just waking up on his trip to the afterlife. Maybe this isn’t Gustav at all, but just his mind or some cosmic power giving him what he needs to make the journey.

Gods, does Molly want to go. He won’t cling to life like his predecessor did; won’t put some poor fuck through waking up with nothing but a resounding _lack_. And he isn’t exactly a fan of the undead, personally speaking. He does tend to stab them.

He thinks about it. His story is over, and it was a good one, wasn’t it? He left the world better than he found it. He started with nothing and climbed from there—had some good times with the carnival, some good times with the Mighty Nein. Died for something he believed in. Beginning, middle, end. Mollymauk Tealeaf is done.

And he’s tired. He’s so tired, and he doesn’t want to do this again, turn the cycle of life and death on its head for his own selfish reasons. Defying nature is _hard_ and he got two good years out of it, didn’t he? More than. He should accept that death has come for him like it does anyone else, that taking a mortal blow spells the end of it. No special circumstances, no exceptions. That’s all he’s ever asked for.

He’s ready to accept it. He’s ready to rest.

But…

But Beau. He’d heard her as he died.

It had been horrible. A tiny little gasp from their tough-as-nails monk, and she knew as well as he did that they were out of miracles. This is gonna tear her up inside.

She’ll come out the other end stronger than she was before. Maybe she’ll learn a thing or two from him, even. Since he won’t get the chance to learn from her. She’ll survive this, and she’ll be fine.

But Caleb. He’s much tougher than he believes but Molly doesn’t know how he’d take another loss, not when he’d only just started to trust that the Mighty Nein are in it for the long haul.

He’ll…he’ll be okay eventually. He will, right? Molly isn’t _that_ important to him. More of a meatshield than anything else. This won’t be the loss that breaks Caleb Widogast. Molly refuses to be the one to do that.

But Nott. She had so few people in the first place, and there had been so much Molly had wanted to show her.

She has Caleb. They’ll help each other. They have to be enough for each other. They’ve always been before.

But Yasha hates being caged.

But Jester believes in a world where her friends aren’t taken from her—tiefling solidarity is staying alive for each other.

But Fjord will feel responsible and he’s already self-destructive enough.

But Molly hadn’t been _done_ yet.

Gustav is waiting patiently as Molly does the mental math, and he’s never been good with numbers but all he can come up with is that he _can’t_ leave yet. Even if it’s just practicality, the Mighty Drei are going to need all the manpower they can get to once again become seven-which-is-Nein (six, now, unless you count Frumpkin), and losing one of their number could tip the scales from victory to death. In the ongoing battle to rescue their missing three, they almost—

No one has ever, ever _needed_ Molly. He’s been useful, and helpful, and he’s taken blows and pitched tents and cheered and bled and died for people, but if he weren’t around, those people would find a way through. He surrounds himself with resourceful bastards; they’d manage without him. But in this one instance, just once, Molly thinks that Beau and Caleb and Nott and Yasha and Jester and Fjord might _need_ him. If only for a little while, if only through this crisis.

He believes—he thinks—he hopes that they’d _want_ him around, after. They might think they need him, or they might say they do. They’re good people, deep down. But they actually, truly _do_ need him right now, as a strict matter of life and death. He can help them, and they need all the help they can get.

He looks at Gustav, or Death, or whoever he’s speaking to.

“If I—I mean, no offense to you, and all, but I—there was something I needed to do,” he says. “I can, once I’ve done it that’s okay, whatever has to happen, I’m not about to fight you on it, but—can I really just…leave? If there’s something I—is that even allowed? You won’t, like, double-kill me?”

He sounds faintly ridiculous, but despite all evidence to the contrary he doesn’t actually know how any of this works. He’s pretty sure people don’t get to just decline death, though.

“We’re a carnival, not a prison, lad,” Gustav says, and Molly nods along even though he’s pretty sure death should be more like a fish trap than a wandering circus. One way in, no ways out. “If you need somewhere to stay on your way to your something, we’ve honest pay for honest work as long as you don’t mind working hard. We don’t have doors to lock on you, whenever you want to leave.”

Molly frowns. This is really rewriting his thoughts about death, which have previously been _probably astral plane_ and _undeath is bad_. Neither really seem to apply here.

“If I want to leave, I just…go?” Molly asks.

Gustav shrugs, appearing nonchalant. He’s always been good at bullshitting his way through. “Would be a little dangerous on the road, but that sword of yours is mighty shiny, oughtta do the trick. Unless you get stabbed again, of course.”

Molly follows his gaze and sure enough, the silvered rapier he was reborn with the first time seems to have followed him here. He frowns at it.

“Actually,” he tries on a showman’s smile and Gustav’s eyes twinkle in recognition, “if you could take that off my hands, I’d appreciate it. Could trade you for saving my life and for any blade you’ve got lying around, if you can spare it. I don’t think I want that sword.”

Gustav looks taken aback as he realizes what Molly’s offering—Molly doesn’t know what the hell Gustav’d done to keep anyone from stealing it the first time, but he’d kept it around until Molly had categorically refused to be within a hundred feet of it.  Even then, Molly had a sneaking suspicion he kept it hidden away, just in case Molly would change his mind about wanting to rediscover his past. It had a little symbol carved into the hilt that would have offered him a start, if so.

This Gustav is probably startled that he’s giving up whatever symbolic safety the sword offers in the afterlife—more of his borrowed skills, a weapon, a clear path home, perhaps—but Molly refuses to come back to life on the coattails of whatever poor, crazy bastard came before him. He’ll take a shitty show sword over some blood cultist’s magic rapier any day.

It turns out that once it’s clear that Molly’s not taking no for an answer, Gustav is more than happy to part with two blunted practice scimitars. He offers a shortsword with an actual blade, but Molly is coming back on his own path and he’s using his own damned swords.

Well, not his _own_ , which had been a birthday present from the whole carnival crew and probably cost a small fortune for circus folk, but these will do. And not even the illusory Ornna begrudges his stay once she sees the blade he’s trading for his keep: the rapier’s craftsmanship alone would be worth a few hundred gold, and silvered it’s worth even more. She stares at him distrustfully for a while, but he hangs out with Toya and she eventually softens.

He considers what to do about Kylrie, but since none of this is real anyway and he’d once considered the guy family, he’s willing to let the whole fiend thing go. Some people call Molly a fiend and he’s never turned anyone undead except himself.

He follows the carnival to the nearest big city, nearly a month’s travel with all the stops in little towns for shows. He takes up his old post as barker and general handyman and he comes in handy in a fight, too—he doesn’t need his swords to be real as long as they can draw on his blood. But once they reach Trostenwald (which is horribly ironic), he waves a fond goodbye and promises to return some day, when his Mighty Nein don’t need him and he’s ready to die.

Gustav accuses him of being morbid and everyone laughs like he’s joking. Maybe this is how people cope, in the afterlife?

Regardless, he shakes himself off and moves on. If he wants to return, it makes sense that he’ll find his way by getting to this world’s version of his friends. With Yasha not arriving at the carnival for another several months and Beau and Fjord who knows where, he’s going to go to the friends who were in greatest peril at this time.

He’s got an asylum to infiltrate, and a couple of dear thieves to save.


	2. How it Came to Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb is not sure how his life came to be this way.
> 
> Nott is cold, wet, and miserable.
> 
> Yasha has a lot of blood on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Thanks to everyone who's commented so far!

Caleb Widogast is not sure how his life came to be this way.

Well, he can track it perfectly. His memory is flawless and it shines through all his mistakes and cruelties. He knows what each step was, and when and how it was taken.

It’s just…

He glances at the slumbering heap that constitutes his party. Mollymauk ‘my friends call me Molly’ Tealeaf, who appeared at the perfect time to break two individual inmates out of the asylum and run for the hills, and Nott the Brave, tiny goblin who Mollymauk seems determined should be Caleb’s best friend.

They are advantageous. Nott is small and sneaky and packs a punch when she gets the drop on someone, and Mollymauk is almost suicidally reckless in his desire to get between the two of them and any form of danger.

Together, they perfectly complement Caleb’s own abilities in a way that nearly guarantees his safety in the day-to-day. Mollymauk is generous and protective to a fault concerning Nott and Caleb himself, and Caleb is certain he could ask for the moon and Mollymauk would do his best to bring it down for him. Nott, too, in her own way, is obsessive about keeping the three of them safe and out of harm’s way, and the paranoia of a goblin is nothing to sniff at.

It's just that Caleb doesn’t necessarily _understand_. He doesn’t _get it_.

When Mollymauk had appeared in the asylum and told him play along, and then when his (frankly terrible) escape plan had gone to shit and he’d told Caleb to _go on you asshole get out of here!_ , and then when he’d said he could set them up with any coin or equipment they needed for their new life on the run and Nott had sheepishly handed him back the jewelry she’d slipped off his person, and then when Caleb had proposed sticking together because there is safety in numbers (even though the numbers in question were two of the most ostentatious people he could have gone with, and perhaps the choice was more his fool heart speaking to the first chance of safety, of companionship, of—)

Anyway. During all of that, Mollymauk had never gotten around to explaining why _them_. And it couldn’t have been that he broke everyone out of the asylum, because _why_? And they’d left in a hurry and he wouldn’t have had the chance, and also because Mollymauk is shit at breakouts and Caleb would have noticed either the minor break in reality or the massive amount of damage to Mollymauk’s person that another one would require.

Honestly, Caleb half-thought it was his own past coming to haunt him, except that Nott has no history of torture, assassination, fanaticism…anything but goblinhood, really. And also, Mollymauk ‘doesn’t believe in the past,’ on ‘religious grounds.’

Caleb has never met a pair so singularly frustrating in his life. Nor, as he comes to live with them, more endearing.

So yes, Caleb does not understand how his life came to be this way. Perhaps he and Nott were simply the first ones Mollymauk ran into, when he decided for mysterious reasons to break into the asylum. Perhaps Mollymauk’s tarot readings are not entirely bullshit and he was guided by fate. Perhaps Nott has some cosmic significance and Caleb is along for the ride.

Perhaps Caleb’s life is designated by random chance. The roll of a die.

Likely, Nott is a strong force for chaos in the world, and so is Mollymauk, and agents of great change are drawn to one another naturally in order to maximize the damage they can deal to Caleb’s understanding of how things are supposed to work.

That one does sound right. It sounds like something they would do.

Regardless, Caleb is here now, keeping watch at a campfire in the middle of the woods, with these two bizarre creatures he would kill and die for, and this is what his life is now.

He turns a page in his spellbook and continues studying with half a mind out for danger. _Find familiar_ seems like an interesting spell. Frivolous, perhaps, but he thinks Nott would like a cat.

And judging by the components innocuously slipped into his bag, so would Mollymauk.

* * *

Nott the Brave scowls at the rain, at the grass, at the trees. She still doesn’t want to be here, and Molly’s lashing tail is about to get swiped if he doesn’t stop _pacing_.

“You are…you are sure that we need to be here right this instant, ja?” Caleb asks as Molly makes another circuit of the clearing. “Not perhaps later, when we would not be cold and wet and miserable?”

He’s irritable because he can’t take his books out in the rain. Nott is irritable because she’s cold and wet and miserable. Molly isn’t irritable because this is all his plan anyway.

This is why Caleb usually makes the plans—Molly can be kind of stupid sometimes, or maybe he’s just crazy. He’s very observant and he _gets_ people (or maybe just Caleb and Nott?), but he’s not always very good at making plans that aren’t stupid. It’s why Caleb and Nott are around. Caleb is very smart and Nott keeps them from getting killed when her companions don’t seem to understand that _everything is dangerous all the time_.

Nott thinks this one was one of those plans Caleb is supposed to prevent with calm logic and the phrase ‘seeing how it goes is not a real plan.’ But Molly’s been going out of his skin about this and nothing Caleb or Nott did could dissuade him from setting up camp in the middle of the woods during the worst thunderstorm she’s seen in ages.

And like hell is Nott letting one of her boys get struck by lightning, and like hell is Caleb going to let them both catch their death of cold while he sits back in the warm, dry inn, so here they all are. Cold, wet, and miserable.

“You can go back if you want to. I’m waiting,” says Molly. Nott sighs.

“What are we even waiting for? Nothing—” There’s a huge crack as a branch breaks, and crashing not five feet away as it falls right in front of her. “Hide! The trees are attacking us!”

Caleb’s hand comes down on her shoulder. “Perhaps not attacking us, but it is very dangerous to be out in these conditions. We should seek some form of shelter.”

Molly shrugs and his tail twists in painful-looking shapes. Maybe he doesn’t have bones in there, after all. Caleb says he does, though, and Caleb is very smart and also less likely to bullshit her than Molly. Molly tried to convince her that pickle water tastes good the other day.

“You two should go back to town. I’m waiting,” he says, leaning against another tree for a moment before both Caleb and Nott tug him off it, remembering Caleb’s warning about lightning striking the tallest thing in the area.

“You could at least tell us what we are waiting for? Then we would be able to help look for it, so we can find it as quickly as possible and then we can seek shelter and not die like a bunch of crazies out in the woods at night,” Caleb tries next, hand still on her shoulder and hovering nervously close to Molly, too.

His accent is very strong right now.

“It’s—I mean, yeah, that one’s fair. You’re not gonna believe me if I tell you, though,” Molly warns, and if he says something after that it’s lost in the crash of thunder and the tiny scream Nott makes as she sees a ghost appear over his shoulder.

In an instant, she is there, pushing him back away from this terrifying apparition so suddenly that he stumbles. “Ghost! There’s a ghost she’s a ghost! Molly you didn’t tell us we were waiting for a ghost!”

The ghost is huge, and white, with _terrifying_ eyes and blood all over her. She looms against a tree and shuffles forwards to _eat_ them and Nott pushes Molly back bodily, but then he steps over her because he’s too fucking tall. But not as tall as the ghost lady, who makes him look Nott’s size in comparison, and now Caleb is saying that they need to go and pulling at the back of Molly’s shirt too, and taking out his diamond, and Molly just reaches his arms out and catches the ghost with a quiet _oof_.

“Hup, yeah, there we go, there’s a good girl, just don’t fight me on this and we’ll get you fixed right up,” he says, like he’s carrying Nott out of a bad scrap, except that he has about as much luck carrying the ghost lady as Nott had had restraining him.

The ghost lady snarls and Nott jumps behind Caleb, and then out from behind Caleb because the ghost has Molly, but Molly just leans her on himself and pets her hair.

“Yeah, that’s alright, we’re not gonna hurt you. Caleb, could you get the healing potion?” Molly hits his knees in the moss, and the ghost gets gore all over him. He’s going to spend hours tutting and cleaning his shirt later.

“Are you sure this is wise? We have no idea who this person is,” Caleb says, still poised to attack or defend. Nott holds on to her hand crossbow, but Molly keeps curling around the ghost and it’s hard to get a clear shot.

“Caleb, Nott, this is Yasha. She’s bleeding a lot and needs our help. Yasha, I have it on good authority that you won’t remember this tomorrow,” Molly says, finally laying the ghost to rest on the forest floor as he fusses with her clothes.

Nott looks to Caleb for instruction, and he shrugs helplessly. But he’s super good with his magic and very smart, so he should probably be keeping an eye on the ghost woman in case she turns into a zombie and tries to eat them. Nott shuffles through the knapsack for the potion Molly spent most of his gold on earlier.

 _Honestly_ , he’d insisted. _We’re getting this one with honest coin_.

Hadn’t stopped Caleb from popping in an hour later with an urgent distraction for the storekeep while Nott stole the gold and a couple of extras besides back, but Molly is welcome to believe he paid for it. They’re still trying to convince him about the stealing thing.

“Thank you, Nott,” Molly says when she hands over the potion reluctantly. He spares a forehead kiss for her before gently coaxing the ghost to open her mouth.

“There we go, that’s it, just gotta get you patched up,” he soothes, guiding her through drinking it. Nott winces at all that valuable healing down the drain. Caleb could really use that because he’s very squishy, or Molly because he’s very bad at staying alive. Molly would just laugh at her if she said so, though.

“If we must take care of this violent wanderer, perhaps we could drag her somewhere safer,” Caleb suggests, and Molly shrugs.

“If you wanna try lifting her, be my guest,” he says, and Caleb makes an aggrieved sound. Nott pushes at the ghost’s shoulder, but she’s very heavy.

“This is a very heavy ghost,” Nott declares. Molly laughs, but Caleb doesn’t look as amused.

“Look, we cannot endanger ourselves for this stranger, and we cannot remove her from danger. We should leave her here and come back in the morning. If she survives the night, we can help her then,” he says. Nott is pretty sure that means _pretty please do not get attached to this stray like you did the sailor, or the angry monk, can we just once get through meeting someone who needs our help without giving them all of our coin and supplies_.

To be fair, Molly only gives up his share of coin and supplies, but Caleb and Nott aren’t going to let him be completely helpless until they can rustle some up again. It ends up being Molly’s supplies to strangers and Caleb and Nott’s supplies to Molly and someone else’s supplies to all three of them at the next opportunity.

For someone who is so smart, Molly is very stupid. He wouldn’t have to give up his supplies if he just lets the ghost woman die, and then they could look through her stuff for loot.

Molly’s tail whips back and forth and twists like a dying snake, and he hunches over the ghost defensively. Nott takes a swig because the tension is getting to be far and away above what she is prepared to deal with.

With visible effort, Molly takes a deep breath, and still cradling the ghost, turns to more fully face Caleb. It’s hard to tell where he’s looking because he doesn’t have pupils, but he says he can see so he’s probably looking at Caleb, too.

“There is a carnival setting up camp not too far from here. They got caught up in the storm and they’ll be setting up late. Two of them will be fighting loudly, they should be hard to miss. Go to them, ask for Bo and Gustav to help carry something heavy. If it means anything to them, you can tell them it’s me—they might remember me as the guy who got stabbed. Or the only one who’s bloody purple, that’ll do. We might be able to set up with them for the night.” Molly rattles all this out and then turns back to the woman half in his lap, muttering soothing nothings to her, little bits of song that sound foreign to Nott. Then again, most things that are not Goblinoid, Zemnian, or whatever Molly is sound foreign to Nott. Maybe it’s the national anthem.

“We should get to these carnival people as quickly as possible,” Caleb says, and something else that is drowned out by a deafening crash as lightning strikes far too close for comfort. He gently disentangles Nott from where she’d jumped onto his shoulder at the sound.

“I don’t know, should we leave Molly alone with the ghost? She might eat him,” Nott points out, and Caleb nods.

“Ja, it may be dangerous for Molly to be alone with her when she wakes up. We do not know who she is or how she may react to…tieflings.” He makes an awkward gesture. Nott looks at him.

“Yes, waking up to a Goblin will make her feel much better, I’m sure,” she says.

“Well, we cannot send you to the circus people, we do not know them either,” Caleb says. “And if I go alone, she may attack the two of you while I am gone, and Molly will not leave the dying woman, so it appears we are at an impasse!”

“…two, one,” Molly mutters, and there is another crash in the undergrowth, and a gasp.

“Oh! Oh there are—there are people here!” says a crackly voice, and Nott instinctively points her crossbow at…a little Dwarven girl.

“Hello, Toya,” Molly says.

“Oh! Molly, yes, hello! What are you doing here?” she stutters, and on a closer look she is shivering a little. It’s hard to see through the rain.

“Ah, just hanging around,” Molly says. “Made some new friends, and all. I’m still not ready to go with you, but do you think you could get us some more hands? This woman is badly injured and she’ll need more than a forest floor to help her.”

The girl inches closer with a wary eye to Nott and Caleb, who are both visibly ready to attack anyone making an aggressive movement.

“I—I’m lost,” she says. Molly closes his eyes for a moment and rests his forehead on the ghost’s shoulder. Then he sits up again.

“If I give you directions back, can you make it? Honestly, I let you go out one time without me,” he mutters, but there’s no bite to it. “You were running off from the fight with Ornna and Gustav and Desmond, right? And no one was there to keep you from getting lost in the rain.”

The girl nods along. Nott looks at Caleb.

“Is she gonna get us back to the carnival people? Is that where we’re going?” she hisses.

“I do not know, but it sounds like the only solution that we will all agree to,” he whispers back. “Perhaps keep your mask on, just in case.”

Nott nods—she’s not stupid—and taps the edge of it to confirm. Meanwhile, Molly calls over.

“Toya will go get us some help, and then we’ll be with the circus crew until the storm goes out. It’ll be raining hard until Yasha gets better, so we’ll be able to move by then, too. Sound good to everybody?” He nods to the two of them, and Caleb calls back an agreement.

“As long as she doesn’t eat us,” Nott adds. That’s an important part of the plan.

And so Yasha is added to the party.

Luckily, she, too, is cold, wet, and miserable. She fits right in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End part 2! There won't be a part three to this--just imagine Beau first sees them when Molly conveniently gets in the way of someone searching for her, and then a few months later runs into them again but they have a hot lady with them this time so she joins up. Fjord they pick up half-drowned so he can't run away, Jester they collect on the road, and eventually Molly realizes that this isn't actually the afterlife and freaks the fuck out.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please let me know how you liked it!


	3. The Last Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau thinks that Molly is kind of full of shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said this was done? lol. someone in the comments mentioned that the scene where Molly realizes that he's Not Actually Dead would be really fun, and I sat down to write that bc you know what, They're Right.
> 
> This is not that scene, because Beau wanted to talk instead. I may or may not write that scene later, though. It does sound like a good time.

Beau thinks that Molly is kind of full of shit.

She doesn’t really believe in seeing the future and whatever—maybe Caleb believes that Molly’s some kind of seer or something, but for her money the only people who can see the future are maybe really good wizards or something.

Molly is anything but a wizard. She doesn’t think he can even read, for one.

So she’s not a real believer that he somehow sees everything that’s going to happen before it happens.

With that said, though.

Molly does seem to just… _know_ some things. She doesn’t really have an explanation for why, and frankly, she doesn’t want one. It all sounds like a lot of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with unless it’s gonna come and bite them all in the ass, and it never has before.

Molly’s practically a blank slate as far as pasts coming back to haunt them are concerned, and she’s happy to leave him that way. But the present and the future he seems much more involved in.

She might think he's mostly full of shit, but at this point, even Beau tenses up when Molly starts acting nervous. He’s their canary in a very big coal mine.

That canary is pretty freaked out right now.

Molly’s been acting weird for a few days—not much more so than he was in Zadash, but still pretty damned strange. She’d thought they’d reached the end of it when he’d “woken up” one morning—there is nothing he can say to convince her he actually slept that night—and gave Yasha and Jester each big hugs, and Fjord a kiss on the forehead. He’d seemed to chill the fuck out after that, for a bit.

This Iron Shepherd shit is freaking him out but good, though.

Beau stares hard into the sky to avoid kicking Molly’s ass as he sighs and shifts yet again, mixing up his tarot cards and laying them down one by one in yet another different formation. This one is apparently no good either, because he huffs and sweeps them all up to shuffle again.

He moves to a crouch, and then back to cross-legged, and then sits on his ankles.

She’s actually gonna kill him if he keeps this up.

“Okay, what is it,” she says.

Molly looks up, startled, and tries his bullshit smile. She hates that face.

“What is what, unpleasant one?” he asks, faux-innocent. “My cards? If we’re just figuring that out, we’ve got a long ways to go.”

“No, dumbass, I know what tarot cards are,” she says. “What are you fidgeting for? You’re gonna wake everybody up.”

Molly casts a glance at the sleeping huddles of the others, who have remained completely unmoved.

“Right,” he says. “I can see that.”

“Look, just tell me what the fuck is wrong,” Beau hisses. “If you keep fidgeting with those cards I am actually going to kill you.”

Molly opens his mouth for a quick retort—and closes it. He looks at her consideringly.

Damn it, of all the times to choose to be there for her teammates. It looks like he needs to talk about something.

“Will you?” he asks.

“What?” What a non-sequitur.

“Will you kill me if I keep fucking around?” he says.

What a weird fucking question to ask somebody.

“No, I won’t fucking kill you for shuffling your cards at two in the morning. I might have to kick your ass, though,” she says.

He frowns.

“No, actually. I wasn’t going to say anything, it’s just that it’s been a while and I’m not really dead yet. Or, I don’t feel dead? It seems like that should get decided soon, one way or the other. Leaving it like this just seems sloppy,” he says.

What.

“Did you hot your head or something? It was just a joke. You know I say stupid shit sometimes. I’m not actually going to kill you,” Beau says. She can feel her face heating up. Is this actually what they think of her? No way. The Mighty Nein might not know everything about her, but she's not just waiting to go apeshit some day and kill them all. Molly is just being weird. “What the _fuck_ , Molly?”

He gusts out a sigh. “Fine then, be like that if you like. I guess it ends soon enough, anyway.”

He makes as if to turn back to his watch, but actually, what the fuck. What the actual fuck?

“No, it doesn’t ‘end soon enough!’” Before she knows what she’s doing, Beau grabs him by his stupid shit idiot shoulder and turns him back toward her. “What the hell does that even mean? You can’t just say shit like that and move on, what the hell are you trying to say?”

Bastard has the nerve to look surprised, like she was just gonna let that fly. Yeah, sure, Beau’s not a great person, but she’s not just gonna just…whatever this is, she’s not taking it lying down.

Not when it sounds like it’ll take Molly down with it. Fucking dumbass isn’t even bothering to get mad about the manhandling, just looking at her with that ‘oh I just understand the world so much better than you, I know exactly what’s going to happen and I’ve decided what to do about it and you can just sit and be good while I keep you out of the important choices’—no, that shit’s not gonna fly.

Molly’s a jackass, but if he's saying what it sounds like he's saying, she’s not gonna let him just fade away. Not without saying something.

“Look, it’s just been longer than I thought it’d be, right?” Molly soothes. Beau bristles. She doesn’t want to be soothed, she wants to kick his ass until he gets his head on straight.

“ _What’s_ been longer than you thought it’d be? I swear, by any god, if you don’t start making sense I’m gonna knock your teeth out, asshole,” she hisses.

Actually, that sounded kinda mean. She kind of feels bad about that.

“Yeah, right, you don’t know what I’m talking about, nothing going on here.” Molly rolls his eyes with his whole face. Beau doesn’t feel bad anymore. “Let’s just get this over with. It’ll all sort out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow we’re gonna crack some skulls and kill some assholes. That’s all that happens.” Beau shakes Molly to try to get that to settle in. “Got it? Stop talking like the world ends tomorrow. It’s just another job.”

Ugh, that was the wrong thing to say. Now Molly looks _morose_. Why didn’t she let Fjord take this shift? Or Nott. Nott actually likes Molly even when he's being an asshole, she’d have something better to say.

Before Beau can try to figure out what either of them would do, Molly pulls together a smile. She can feel his muscles deliberately relaxing under her hands. He grins, open and relaxed.

“You’re right! Just another job. It ends how it ends, nothing wrong with that,” Molly says, brushing her hold off of him. Beau lets him go, suspicious. “Who am I to counter the whims of fate? I’m just relieved to be accomplishing something, one way or the other. Nothing to lose sleep over.”

He jumps to his feet, brushing dirt off his coat.

“I think I’ll do a round of the perimeter. Never can be too careful, you know. I’ll let you know if I find anything,” he says. Not that he’ll really need to let her know; the perimeter is about ten feet away in plain sight. Beau scowls.

She’s tempted to knock him over the head and sit him down until he gives her a _real answer, damn it_ , but then she thinks maybe she’s pushing too hard. Too hard, too fast, too much; Beau’s never really been good at a soft touch.

Maybe that’s what Molly needs, instead of her interrogating him. He's already walking away.

“…be careful,” she says, eventually. It just doesn't feel right not to say anything—screw what the right thing to do is, Beau needs to get in the last word. Molly half-turns back to her, surprised. “Don’t get killed tripping over a rock or something.”

She’ll talk to Fjord tomorrow. Or Yasha, Yasha might know how to deal with this. Clearly, Beau’s not helping.

And then Caleb wakes up, and the alarm’s been tripped, and the matter is forgotten about entirely for most of a hard fight. Way harder than they were expecting it to be.

Turns out Molly is not entirely full of shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still working on [The Meaning of Nostalgia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539530/chapters/43978486), it's just turned out pretty long so I want to get more done before I put it out in the world. Expect that to start updating some time this summer!


End file.
